These fittings will be going on a custom jian made by US bladesmith, Rick Barrett, and are made of steel and meteorite iron. It took about one year and a half to have the sword made, polished and etched by him and it should be arriving within the week. I'll post the pictures of it soon.

That is a beautiful set of fittings there. Although I must concur with the possibility of them being Ming fittings. They look distinctly Qing to me. That's not to say that they are not gorgeous. Jon showed me an antique with a similar set that made me water at the mouth with desire. I can't wait to see the finished product.

I just wanted to add the following information Rick told me about the blade I purchased from him:

"This piece was an experiment and I generally don't sign experimentation pieces or prototypes. For one, working in an unknown such as meteoritic [Sic}] iron, the performance variables are unknown and normally the piece would have been left unsigned and tested to destruction. In folding the blade I tried laminating more layers of high carbon steel in the center of the billet, it is not a true san mei construction but rather had more modern steel added to the core area...There was more the 25% meteor used in the billet, closer to 45% mixed with W1 and 1050."

W1 and 1050 are more modern steels.

I was offered this unheat-treated meteorite blade by Rick after ordering a custom twisted pattern jian and bought it, because I had wanted to have a sword made partially of meteorite iron. I saw where Zheng Wu Forge was selling swords on eBay made of meteorite iron for $20K + and thought this iron must be special. However, after discussing the use of meteorite iron with Francis Boyd and I think Scott Rodell, basically this type of iron is inferior to the types found in modern steel and is more of a gimmick. That being said, it still is rather cool to have something extraterrestrial in a terrestrial piece.

I always liked the Royal Poeny fittings but in my opinion those gold plated open work ones you have there are going to look real slick with a nice beefy handle wrap right up to the guard paired up with a nice dark red rosewood scabbard or the like.

They look chunky too, i've never seen the Royal Poeny fittings up close but it's good to have solid guard fittings, if Rick made a Tunkou (brass collor) for the blade and you had it Nickel plated to match the Meteorite textures in the blade. That would set it off nicely seeing as the guard is quite stout.

Anyway I'm still torn, because Rick is also making me a twist-core jian, but my feeling is with his schedule it is at least a year or two away. So then the question becomes do I save the gold fittings for this future blade or use them now for the one I have?

Also, I have another set of the same open-work fittings that were already gold plated, but I am missing the throat piece for the scabbard and one of the scabbard hangers, as they were stolen at a Japanese sword show when I brought them to show a person how I wanted my brass set to be gold plated like the ones that were stolen from me. I was given a gold plated scabbard mount that could be made into a hanger, but I'm still missing the throat piece. If I ever complete that set I can either have them gold-plated or just remove all the gold and leave them brass colored, though it seems to be a waste of gold plating even though one of the hangers and the throat piece if I ever find a single will not match the color of the other gold plated fittings.

Tony Mosen wrote,

I always liked the Royal Poeny fittings but in my opinion those gold plated open work ones you have there are going to look real slick with a nice beefy handle wrap right up to the guard paired up with a nice dark red rosewood scabbard or the like.

They look chunky too, i've never seen the Royal Poeny fittings up close but it's good to have solid guard fittings, if Rick made a Tunkou (brass collor) for the blade and you had it Nickel plated to match the Meteorite textures in the blade. That would set it off nicely seeing as the guard is quite stout.

Rick did not make a Tunkou for the jian, as I had not asked him to. For the scabbard I was thinking some type of dyed ray-skin, red, green or black, with a matching ray-skin handle or perhaps a more historic(?) contrasting white ray-skin handle, with or without the handle wrap you suggested in a blue or gold color?

I wish I could find a photo of the original jian the open-work fittings were copied from to see what the historical version looked like.

You have to keep in mind that beefy looking, heavy fittings are exactly that, heavy. It will be impossible to have a sword with a correct dimensions blade weigh in at below 820g, you will end up more like in the +950g region. I don't exactly like the trend of having modern replica jian weight (far) over 1000g which you, as far as I remember from the old sword forum averages discussion from around the late 90s early 00s, have found extremely rarely on jian not meant for ceremony or exhibition - just for the feel of clunky fittings. Heavy old-style furniture of course is nice, but on functional swords, well.

BTW, I agree with Tony, your open-work fittings are far, far nicer in looks, at least to me.

A sampling of four different colored handle wraps, one to be used on the meteorite jian. Of the four the greenish gold, second from the left seems the most true to images I have seen of Qianlong era swords with red scabbards and the imperial gold handle wrap. This shade looks closer to a sword that would have had the handle gripped more often, where it darkened with the exposure to hand oils and the elements. The three less bright materials seems to be mercerized cotton, while the bright yellow polyester.

The bright yellow, from which the handle wrap was started didn't seem thick enough height wise to be useable:

You should be looking for highest quality cord, not off-the-shelve stuff. The grip feeling should be very well and the wrapping durable, this was not the case with the usual wrapping I got from China. But there are better ones. You can probably take any cord with the right thickness and width, it doesn't have to be "Chinese jian cord wrapping (TM)".